Public Access Tv Chief Fired

The longtime executive director of Hartford Public Access Television has been fired from his job less than a month after he lost his bid to become mayor of the city.

J. Stan McCauley, who ran as a Republican against Mayor Eddie A. Perez in the November election, says he has no proof, but believes the firing was "politically motivated." He said he plans to talk to an attorney about suing for wrongful termination.

"I believe it is political retribution by the members of the board, who were disturbed that I was running for mayor," McCauley said Friday. "It sends the message to everybody that if you run for office, beware. That if you engage the system, you risk everything."

The station's board of directors will not discuss McCauley's termination. Prior to his termination, he received several letters of admonishment - that he violated the station's harassment policy by having a personal relationship with a subordinate employee and that he failed to do his job satisfactorily on several occasions.

McCauley, 47, had been the executive director of the station since 1999.

The board asked McCauley to resign Thursday, he said, but he refused. He said he was then handed a letter saying he was fired because he was an "at-will employee" and was told to leave immediately, turn in his keys, computer, any cameras in his possession, his cellphone and any records that belong to the station.

Victor Moye, the board president for HPATV, said he could not discuss the details of McCauley's firing because it was a private personnel matter. But he said the termination had nothing to do with politics and that the mission of Hartford public access is to provide city residents with "free speech," not to stifle speech.

"Who gains by firing someone after an election?" Moye said Friday. "Before the election was a bad time. Before Christmas is a bad time. It is always a bad time to do this."

Moye said the station has already hired a new executive director - Linda Bayer, a consultant for Hartford 2000. But Bayer said Friday she was hired only as a consultant "to keep things moving along" until the board can figure out its next move. She said she is not interested in the job permanently.

McCauley, an ordained pastor, is known primarily for his television show, "Light Source Victory Television," which has aired nightly for more than 20 years on the access channel. McCauley describes the religiously based show - which consists of him talking on a wide range of issues - as a "view of Scripture in light of the events of the day, a kind of expository Bible teaching."

The board had sent McCauley three letters - two letters of reprimand and one "letter of concern" - on Oct. 23, while McCauley was on what he describes as a "forced" unpaid leave to run for mayor. The letters, which McCauley provided The Courant, detail a wide range of issues the board had with McCauley's performance, such as failing to file proper paperwork for a grant; not procuring a cellphone for the employee who would be temporarily replacing McCauley while he was on the election trail; and not teaching that same employee how to prepare financial reports for the board's monthly meetings.

The letter of concern, which Moye would only describe Friday as a "weighty" issue, details McCauley entering into a "consensual relationship with a staff person who was [McCauley's] subordinate." In the letter, Moye claims McCauley's "mishandling of a personal affair" could have led to the jeopardy of the Hartford Public Access Television" and left the organization open to "legal exposure."

The relationship violated the station's harassment policy that McCauley asked the board to adopt in 2004, the letter said. The policy says "any relationship involving personnel at different levels on the chain of command" must be reported by the person of higher rank to the employee's supervisor - in McCauley's case, the board of directors.

But McCauley says they have taken the policy out of context. The policy was originally proposed by McCauley to address a situation in which threats had been made between an employee and one of the station's producers. It was not meant to regulate romantic relationships between employees, he said.

What the letter also does not say is that McCauley asked Nyesha Smith, the women described in the letter, to be his wife in January 2006. They were married six months ago.

"There is nothing in our policies that says a proposal of marriage needs to be reported to the board of directors," he said.

He said the board knew of the relationship but expressed no concern about it until he decided to run for mayor. Only then did they try "to find substantive reasons in their mind to terminate me."

"The chances are that you are going to meet people you like where you worship, where you work, or where you hang out," McCauley said. "Those are the people you have things in common with. It is not like I'm some CEO of United Technologies and there is someone way down on the scale that I'm pressuring to date me. I've known this person for a long time, we became friends, fell in love, and got married."